I was wondering if some of the older and wiser members of the forum could provide some advice when it comes to significant others.Basically, it seems like there are a lot of 20 or early thirty something women out there who aren't particular frugal, as I'm sure the ladies here have found true of men as well.

Where did you meet your wife/husband ? How important was their frugality to you ? How did you know they were down to earth and reasonable with their finances ? The dating world is a struggle and maybe learning where you all met your spouses would give good clues on where to look.

I met my wife at work, where I knew her for a decade before we became romantic. Once we became interested in each other romantically, the courtship went very quickly. Before our first "date," I already knew that she had a sense of humor, was intelligent, wasn't fickle, was honest, had a strong work ethic, etc. The only remaining question was whether or not we rocked each others' worlds. 18 years of marriage later, we still feel quite lucky to be with each other

My wife was a saver and the frugal one. I had a boat, motorcycle, two trucks, and a couple hundred bucks in the bank. Now we have a house, 2 cars, a baby boy, an emergency fund, investments, etc…..thank god for my wife. How did I find her? She found me.

We had a class together and often studied in the library. She was a first-year PhD student and I was an undergrad. We both had stipends to cover necessities from college through PhD, but never much more for anything else. I think we both find meaning in our work and not material things.

fratdude wrote:I am asking for input for anyone married to a Mrs. or Mr. Boglehead.

I was wondering if some of the older and wiser members of the forum could provide some advice when it comes to significant others.Basically, it seems like there are a lot of 20 or early thirty something women out there who aren't particular frugal, as I'm sure the ladies here have found true of men as well.

Where did you meet your wife/husband ? How important was their frugality to you ? How did you know they were down to earth and reasonable with their finances ? The dating world is a struggle and maybe learning where you all met your spouses would give good clues on where to look.

I saw my wife when she was 15 and i fell in love at once. Frugality?...... whats that when the hormones are raging. Now that i am older and wiser? i would suggest that if "she" is a spender then get a prenup and if "he" is the spender then she needs the prenup. Ahhh if it were only that simple!

TomatoTomahto wrote:I met my wife at work, where I knew her for a decade before we became romantic. Once we became interested in each other romantically, the courtship went very quickly. Before our first "date," I already knew that she had a sense of humor, was intelligent, wasn't fickle, was honest, had a strong work ethic, etc. The only remaining question was whether or not we rocked each others' worlds. 18 years of marriage later, we still feel quite lucky to be with each other

I married a girl that didn't grow up with all the luxuries. She let her older sister buy clothes at the mall and then borrowed them. She never ordered anything expensive on the menu when we dated. Even without working she has saved us so much money!!!! She is my perfect match. Our relationship has always been based on our common faith.

I live in No Payment Land. It is wonderful, and I'd love for you to live here too.

So any common themes in the places you all first met? Like church, volunteer group, hiking club? any behaviors on dates or in relationships that made you realize they would've caused you to go broke if you married them?

I've been pondering this thread for a bit.There's no simple answer.I think it's good to find a person who's earning his or her own way and making ends meet.Someone in their 20's will likely have student loans, so the key metric at that age is how they handle credit cards, I'm thinking.If they've got that under control, then there's fair chance that decent wealth may accumulate with the passage of time...

pennstater2005 wrote:My wife was a saver and the frugal one. I had a boat, motorcycle, two trucks, and a couple hundred bucks in the bank. Now we have a house, 2 cars, a baby boy, an emergency fund, investments, etc…..thank god for my wife. How did I find her? She found me.

+1

We happened to be on the same dorm floor. She converted me, but we didn't hear about the bogleheads for another 20 years.

As The Wizard says, how they manage their credit card debt could be the best indicator.

I wonder if frugality as a willing lifestyle choice is only evident once the person is making a good salary and has choices -- perhaps years after school graduation. Before that, many young people are just "frugal" by default. You may not be able to tell for someone in their mid 20s.

It's not necessary to find another complete Boglehead as a partner.I think the key issue is someone who's reasonably frugal and definitely not a spendaholic.There are lots of couples where one is completely disinterested in investment stuff. Not the ideal situation perhaps, but quite common, I think...

When you're looking for someone to spend your life with you don't necessarily want someone who is exactly like you are. You should be more interested in finding someone who will be a joy to grow and change with in the years ahead, for surely change will come to both of you. You want someone who will be a blessing and joy to have at your side as you both confront life's many, many challenges together.

When I met my husband he was definitely not a Boglehead. He rarely saved a penny, had credit card debt he preferred not to talk about, and spent more lavishly on home-delivery of pizza than I thought anyone in their right mind should. "Migosh does this guy do anything besides order out for pizza constantly!" I remember marvelling throughout our first year of dating. But he was a sensible, responsible guy, that was clear, and he certainly wasn't a financial train wreck like some I'd dated. (Avoid anyone who keeps asking to borrow money from you when they make four times what you do. Also avoid anyone who has ATM receipts littering the floor of their messy apartment, along with unpaid utility bills.) I figured he'd come around eventually and he did. In fact I'd say that these days he's a stricter Boglehead than I am, in regard to both frugality and index investing. But he's also taught me over the years to not be such a cheapskate, to spend on the important things in life, and to be generous with others, especially charities that are important to us. He's also taught me to be not so uptight about the future and to live a little. So we've both grown in ways that we hadn't anticipated thirty years ago when we first met.

I think the trick is to find someone who shares your values, about what's important in life, about how to spend one's time, efforts, and also money. I think once you have values in common everything else follows pretty naturally. Good luck OP!

You're not going to meet Mr/Ms Boglehead in flashy, expensive places, so don't go there. Just hang out in places where the food is cheap and the clothing obviously not anybody's priority. Grad school comes to mind.

We met volunteering at a migrant clinic. I was a nursing student, he was a medical resident. We both had jobs and lived on our own, without any debt other than small car loans, so we understood how to live within our means, but we had very little in savings. We learned together about saving for retirement & other long range goals as our income grew and we planned a life together, including bringing kids into the world. We didn't discover Bogleheads until after a decade into our marriage. Starting out we had so much more in common than just our financial philosophy (like faith, values, interests, goals), that I can't say that being a Boglehead-type was absolutely crucial to making a good partnership, but it surely helps!

Good luck finding your Mrs. B.!

Last edited by schnoodlemom on Sat Feb 09, 2013 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

fratdude wrote:So any common themes in the places you all first met? Like church, volunteer group, hiking club? any behaviors on dates or in relationships that made you realize they would've caused you to go broke if you married them?

It's more like you'll see the behaviors you wouldn't want to touch with a 10 foot pole. One of my ex girlfriends would order multiple $9 martinis while we were out to dinner.... on a college budget. She drove daddy's infiniti in the summer and his hummer in the winter. When she told me with a straight face that she wanted a $40,000 tiffany's engagement ring, I realized we got way too deep and I could never keep this person happy. It wasn't necessarily just the financial differences, but rather the extreme discrepancies between our priority lists in life.

When my current wife was in college, she would turn off the power strip to her microwave to save money on the power used to keep the LED clock on. See a difference?

We've done well together so far. She has a pretty severe food allergy, so I've had to get used to and accept some higher grocery bills. And it took me sitting down and writing down each income and expense we had during the month for her to realize that just because I work at the "hot shot" company in town, I don't bring home an infinite amount of money per month. She, at times, as a case of keeping up with the Jones', but all in all, we do very well together. I make her more fiscally responsible and she reminds me to live a little every now and then.

Oh yeah, I also saved about $38,000 on the ring and ended up with a much more beautiful woman, inside and out.

I'm not sure there are features that will predict who will become a Boglehead. However, there are certainly red flags that one should be wary about. Out of control credit card debt as mentioned above is one. People who engage in "retail therapy" to cope with stress. I'd also be concerned about someone used to a spendthrift lifestyle from their parents -- did they take many expensive vacations? Get a horse for their 9th birthday? Do a lot of expensive activities such as scuba diving or skiing? None of these are deal breakers but I'd wonder if they're used to an expensive lifestyle, they may have trouble controlling spending. I'd also avoid someone who is unkind to others.

My wife stalked me in college. She was friendly and attractive. On our first date I opened the car door for her and she reached across and unlocked mine (in the days before power locks). That's when I (jokingly) said i'll marry her. She was also happy not going to expensive places when we dated which helped as I was very poor then. Her family is ultra frugal too -- but I was too dumb to notice back then.

These days she drives the frugal spending (cloth diapers, things often bought used on eBay and Craig's list) and she leaves the investing to me.

The Wizard wrote:It's not necessary to find another complete Boglehead as a partner.I think the key issue is someone who's reasonably frugal and definitely not a spendaholic.There are lots of couples where one is completely disinterested in investment stuff. Not the ideal situation perhaps, but quite common, I think...

Very true. Although my wife is frugal and a great saver she has very little interest when I talk investing. She saves it, I invest it. Works great!

I am afraid that you will need to find Mrs Boglehead the same way other people find their significant other. It has to start with physical and emotional attraction - not with compatible levels of frugality. That means you will need to date several woman to whom you are attracted to find the "right one", who hopefully will exhibit the financial behavior you think you find appealing.

Here is a suggestion that I expect would have a very high success rate... if looking for Mrs. Boglehead...

Go to a ladies clothing store...

Pay attention to potential candidates as they arrive (screen for looks, physical attributes you prefer, etc...) and then only move to the next step... if they go directly to the Sale/Clearance rack first.

Past that - I would suggest you find out if she is a good cook - after a few dates - cook supper for her and then ask her to make supper for you.

If a man finds a woman with the looks he prefers, who is a thrifty shopper and can cook tooo... Well it just does not get much better than that in a Mrs. Boglehead.

I found Mrs. Boglehead "across a crowded room." Now, to be honest, I was not having much luck with women and felt a bit desperate--so it didn't take an awful lot in the way of someone actually returning my smile to trigger the ZAP! KABLOWIE! SHE'S THE ONE response, but in any case... we were mutually thunderstruck. We were married less than six months later, but that does not take into account the fact that I was out of the country for three of those months doing grad work. She still has the letters.

It was not a left-brained process. It did not even involve those silly shallow personal-ads things. Well, OK, we knew there weren't any extreme mismatches in religion or politics. I do remember having some explicit conversations about how many kids we wanted. I like classical music and show tunes; she hates ALL music. She loves animals, I don't. We have different brand preferences in many of the key brands that define our identity as human beings. Both of us were attractive enough for practical purposes but NEITHER of us fit the idealized fantasy description of the physical type we would say appeals to us. Oh, sure, we both like long walks on the beach.

I don't remember money coming into the picture at all. Well, I probably mentioned that I was earning IIRC about $3100 a year at the time. (The sixties). (Not a lot even then).

I married the person who felt RIGHT, and hoped she was financially compatible with me. Luckily, she was. I am afraid there's a lot of luck involved in courtship and mating and not much that can or should be done about it.

I found my wife in the Philippines, through the Internet. To her a $20 dress is expensive. I wasn't really looking for someone frugal, but I did want down-to-earth. This might be surprising but I wasn't finding any down-to-earth women in Beverly Hills, where I live.

TomatoTomahto wrote:I met my wife at work, where I knew her for a decade before we became romantic. Once we became interested in each other romantically, the courtship went very quickly. Before our first "date," I already knew that she had a sense of humor, was intelligent, wasn't fickle, was honest, had a strong work ethic, etc. The only remaining question was whether or not we rocked each others' worlds. 18 years of marriage later, we still feel quite lucky to be with each other

I was thinking a bit more about the frugality side of your question, and truth be told, my wife and I were not identical on this dimension.

My wife has always lived within her means and for a while was funding some of her family's lifestyles. Her solution was not necessarily to be frugal, but rather to earn more. She has always earned more than I did, and that's why today I'm the stay-at-home-dad and she's the banker. She never paid much attention to investments and saving, but she is a reasonable person and decided that I could be in charge of that. Every quarter or so, I give her a State of the Household report.

The point I'm trying to make is that if your potential spouse is honest, reasonable, has respect for your views, is not concerned with impressing others, and most importantly, is not trying to fill a hole in her soul with material possessions, her frugality will not matter. She will compromise, and, FWIW, there's always a chance that you're too frugal. An example: my wife likes Range Rovers. She was in the market for a new one, and decided that she really liked the Supercharged one (which sells for around 6 digits). My instinct was to freeze up and say it wasn't sensible. OTOH, she makes more than enough to support such a vehicle (its purchase didn't dent our net worth), and she loves it every day when she heads off to work. Should I have made her feel irresponsible? Why? I now vicariously enjoy the car as much as she does, because the woman I love feels comfortable and happy during her commute. So, she helped me lighten up.

Not to be hopelessly romantic, but true and deep love covers a lot of sins and makes accommodation for your spouse a natural part of your life together.

I didn't marry her (or anyone else) but I was in a relationship with a woman who might have been considered a potential "Mrs. Boglehead."

One of the reasons why I knew:

When she got her first job out of college, she asked me for help on allocating her 401k and opening a Roth IRA. All without my prompting. Later, she got vocally ticked off when her employer switched the 401k provider to one with higher ER funds and it was one of the reasons why she later left the company. Meanwhile most other 23 year old women would have been more concerned with data limits on their Iphones.

I don't believe a Mrs. Bogelhead is born. I think she is "made". Just like I learned to be Mr. Bogelhead. I certainly traveled many paths before I found the Bogelhead path. I have always been frugal, but I have not always had good judgement about investing.

I agree that a happy marriage is built on common values, but it's expecting a lot to agree 100% about all things when you first meet. My wife and I have created common ground and financial security by learning to take control of our relationship with money together. Being on the same team solving challenges made a big difference.

I am grateful that my wife grew up in a modest income home and worked through college. That might have been one of the few early things I knew about her financial orientation that contributed to her later behavior and attitude. We often talk about gratitude.

Seeing our common portfolio improve using Bogelhead strategies unified our approach to many areas of our life together. Talking about money issues using a Bogelhead approach leads to many insights in other areas of life.

I had suggested (strongly) to a colleague at work that he should take out his first dates to a nice restaurant that he has a 50% discount coupon for. Whip out the coupon when he pays the check and anyone who responds negatively is automatically out.